The problem is that a lot of the cities, towns, and neighborhoods have pretty generic names. Some of them aren't named after anything in particular, and others have names that are too similar to each other. So they all start to blend together. There are places called Riverwoods, River Forest, Riverside, Riverdale, River Grove, and Fox River Grove. Park Forest, Forest Park, Melrose Park. Lincoln Park, Lincolnwood, Lincolnshire. Oak Park, Oak Brook, Oak Grove, Oak Lawn, Oak Forest. Arlington Heights, Prospect Heights, Mt. Prospect. Crystal Lake, Lake Zurich, Lake-in-the-Hills, Lake Villa, Round Lake, Island Lake, Long Lake, Fox Lake, Forest Lake, Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, Great Lakes, Grayslake. Northfield, Northbrook, Northlake. Deerfield, Deer Park. Glenview, Glencoe. Highland Park, Highwood. Waukegan, Wauconda. Whew!
[If we included the state of Illinois as a whole, that would bring in such pairs as Morris/Mt. Morris, Rockford/Rockton, Buffalo Grove/Buffalo Prairie, Palatine/Palestine, Vernon Hills/Mt. Vernon, Carmi/Mt. Carmel, and so on. Wisconsin gets into the act, too, with Milwaukee/Pewaukee/Waukesha, Elkhart Lake/Elkhorn, and Osceola/Osseo. Then, there's Lake County, Illinois and Lake County, Indiana. But I'm getting way beyond the scope of this column.]
Oh, and by the way, North Chicago and West Chicago are nowhere near Chicago. Neither is Chicago Heights. On the other hand, East Chicago is, as the name implies, directly east of Chicago -- but it's in Indiana.
One day, I had to go to the Social Security Administration office to get a Social Security card, because my employer asked for one. No one had ever asked me to show them a Social Security card before, in the 30 years or so since I got my number -- my previous employers simply asked what the number was and took my word for it. But maybe there's been a surge in the number of illegal immigrants trying to fake American citizenship and get technical-writing jobs, so companies have had to crack down. In any case, the nearest Social Security office is in Des Plaines (that's near O'Hare International Airport).
Well, I drove down the road on which the office was supposedly located, and kept looking at the numbers, but I couldn't find the building All of a sudden, the numbers jumped from the several-hundreds to something like 9000 or so. And there were no office buildings anywhere -- I was in some kind of forested area, with occasional signs of civilization along the roadside. I stopped at a gas station and said, "I'm looking for the Social Security office in Des Plaines. This is Des Plaines, isn't it?" The young lady at the cash register said, "Yeah, but this is unincorporated Des Plaines. You want incorporated Des Plaines, which is a couple of miles that way."
I eventually managed to find my way back to Des Plaines, Incorporated, and after a fashion, found the Social Security office therein -- but I ended up taking a pretty long lunch hour to do it.
In the Kafalas.com household, Meg is the city specialist, while I'm better at navigating the suburbs -- so when we're together, we can usually find our way around without getting lost for too long. But the names don't help. Especially the generic ones that aren't really named after much of anything -- come on now, how am I supposed to remember Park Ridge, Villa Park, and Park City? Or Prairie View and Prairie Grove? I have a degree in geography, but I'm afraid it's no match for the way Chicagoans name their places.
Copyright © 1998 John J. Kafalas